Banking error in your favour: Teacher finds £6.3bn has been put into his account by mistake

Huge funds: Parijat Saha thought he had 490m rupees in his bank account, only to find it was a bank error

An Indian schoolteacher thought he had become a billionaire after finding $9.8bn in his account - only to discover it had been put in his account by mistake.

Parijat Saha could not believe his eyes when his State Bank of India account in West Bengal credited him online with 490bn rupees, making him a billionaire on paper.

But rather than attempt to spend his new-found wealth, Mr Saha called his bank and was disappointed to learn the funds were put there through a bank error.

Embarrassed officials at the State Bank of India would not comment on how the huge sum ended up in Mr Saha's account, but said that as the funds were 'uncleared' he could not have withdrawn the money anyway.

The honest teacher had expected his balance to be around $200, as he earns a monthly salary as a school teacher in West Bengal of 35,000 rupees ($700 or £450).

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Mr Saha, who lives in the town of Balurghat in South Dinajpur district, told the BBC: 'On Sunday evening, when I was checking my savings account balance on the internet, I was expecting an amount of a little more than 10,000 rupees ($200).

The State Bank of India have refused to explain how the huge fund ended up in Mr Saha's account

'I called up a friend in the bank and joked, maybe money is overflowing in your bank, that's why your system has remitted so much money into my account.

'Even though I got my money back, the account still holds the billions of dollars as uncleared amount. I don't know how long I'll have to keep that astronomical figure in my account.'

Subhashish Karmakar, chief manager of the State Bank of India's branch in Balurghat, would not comment on the incident or explain how the funds got into Mr Saha's account.

The bank's regional headquarters in Calcutta and national headquarters in Mumbai have been alerted and officials are trying to figure out what went wrong, sources in the bank say.